“He’s one of the most promising youngsters around, I think, and he was a handful for us.

“I think just, in general, we allowed him and other players too much time in the box and that was why we got punished. It wasn’t lack of effort.

“We wanted to take the game to them a bit more and the changes we made later on in the game proved that we had better players coming off the bench.

“It was disappointing though, because, regardless of what team we put out, we wanted to make more of a contest of it and win the game.”

Grayson, who made six changes, added: “There were some OK performances.

“I thought Darron Gibson did OK on the ball, we were better when Williams and McManaman came on, but it was that balance of keeping them fresh for the weekend because of the schedule we have got with playing Saturday-Tuesday-Saturday again next week.”